D. provides a cultural and intellectual history of Roman imperialism nested within the broader world of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. The book opens with a tour de force description of the peregrinations of one Hegesias, an ambassador from Lampsacus who, after the Second Macedonian War, travelled from his hometown in Asia Minor to Greece to meet with the quaestor Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, then made a long haul to Massilia in Southern Gaul, turned eastwards to Rome, then back to Greece to meet with the proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus, and finally home again with letters of introduction of the Galatian Tolostoagioi of central Anatolia. The trip lays out the contours of a wider ‘globalised’ world, the oikoumene, roughly contiguous with the Mediterranean Sea, which Hellenistic thinkers increasingly saw as a cultural and intellectual unity. Some also yearned for political unity under the dominion of a single ruler, a true successor to Alexander the Great. Enter Rome, an adjacent power fully capable of deploying the idioms of Hellenistic diplomacy and with the military capacity to dominate the geography through which persons like Hegesias circulated.
But for Greek observers, Rome did not quite fit into Hellenistic mental categories, as underneath the sturdy facade of shared Hellenism were inscrutable currents of the alien and barbarian. Rome's institutions resembled those of a polis, although even here the fit was incongruent, for example the concept of Latin populus translated only imperfectly to Greek demos. More problematic was that this polis had the military and diplomatic power that rivalled (and soon exceeded) that of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Roman magistrates abroad did not comport themselves as modest civic officials and rather presented themselves as the confident peers of kings. The ambiguous nature of Roman power prompted the Greeks to manufacture the goddess Roma, first attested on a coin minted by Locri in 275 bc. Sitting enthroned, the goddess represented the supremacy (maiestas) of the Roman state while serving as a singular avatar for the fragmented mechanics of assemblies, senators and magistrates.
D. draws inspiration from the celebrated notion of ‘middle ground’ propounded by R. White (The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region: 1685–1815 [1991]). Developed to explain French imperial arrangements in the Canadian pays d'en Haut, this model posited that the relative stability of the region rested on a series of mutual misunderstandings between the French and various Native American groups. Here, the mutual misunderstandings tended to elide conflict and to constitute new relationships in creative ways. For Rome and the Greeks, however, misunderstandings instead triggered spectacular blow-ups, the Aetolian confusion over deditio in fidem (Polyb. 20.9–10) being a well-known case-in-point. Here one salient difference between French and Roman imperialism must be pointed out: the French indulged in creative misunderstandings because they lacked the power to dominate the Native Americans militarily. The brute realities of power, which A. Eckstein mobilised to explain the geopolitical contingencies of the period (Mediterranean Anarchy [2006]), tend to be downplayed by D., although at times I wonder if they underlay the cultural dynamics she so aptly describes.
D. does address the problem of Roman bellicosity, so central to W.V. Harris's vision (War and Imperialism in Republican Rome [1979]), but focusing on Rome's unremitting treatment of defeated or surrendered powers, who found the victors had little appetite for further negotiation. For D. the root of this pathology was religious. The fetial ritual was designed to evoke the wrath of the gods against a disputant, and Rome's victory only validated the divine righteousness of the cause. As such, the Romans had little interest in haggling with the vanquished, in contrast to Hellenistic diplomatic scenarios where it was still considered appropriate for defeated parties to try and achieve the best possible settlement. This is a compelling argument, although it is also possible that Hellenistic powers, living in a geopolitical system of frequent retriangulation, were more willing to treat today's enemy as tomorrow's ally, whereas Rome enjoyed sufficient power to compel a different sort of submission.
The most fascinating discussion in the book, and one that teases out a strong case for Roman exceptionalism, deals with third-party diplomacy. Here there were three basic forms: good offices, where a third party provided a neutral meeting space for the parties but did not otherwise take part in negotiations; mediation, where the third party facilitated a mutual settlement; and finally arbitration, where the third party judged the dispute and imposed a settlement. Both the Romans and Hellenistic kings occasionally took up the offer of good offices. D. notes that Hellenistic kings were sometimes willing to submit to both third-party mediation and even arbitration, even as they much preferred to be the mediators and arbitrators themselves. The Romans, however, never submitted themselves to third-party arbitration and even responded belligerently to offers of mediation, most famously in the punishments meted out to Rhodes after it dared offer to mediate between Rome and Perseus. In turn, the Romans never offered themselves to serve as mediators, only binding arbiters.
While many Greek intellectuals had hoped for a ruler for the oikoumene, the realities of Roman governance soon gave way to dissatisfaction. Polybius, who had initially seen the Roman victory at Pydna as the end of history, soon realised this was premature, and his decision to take his project down to 146 bc was driven by the sad awareness that Rome's seemingly balanced politeia was now succumbing to the inevitable cycle of decline. D. concludes by fast forwarding to the early Principate, where Augustan ideology successfully resolved the mutual misunderstandings that had plagued the earlier era (and also reversed the narrative of decline detected by Polybius), although in the interest of brevity she focuses largely on the gemma Augustea as a case study. Here we see the creative embrace of old solutions, including the goddess Roma seated beside Augustus. Augustan ideology mobilised the Roman concept of imperium, now conveniently embodied in a monarchic figure rather than in the Republican-era magistrates, in a way that exploded old Greek confusions about Rome as a polis or kingdom, and belatedly produced a coherent and legible vision of Roman power.
This excellent study transcends many of the well-worn debates about Roman imperialism. It will be of great use to historians of both the Roman Republic and the Hellenistic world as well as those working on Greek historiography, especially Polybius.
